square and over to where the did now misstating is where we saw barricades being set up and i headed out ongoing standoff between police and protesters so huge numbers arrived here and over there the street in between that's a whole sea of people right now now police have tried to clear. those barricades in front of the did our stage and we saw several charges by riot police into into the rioters there they were well but really they would some of the ugliest scenes i've ever witnessed anywhere anywhere in the world. say there are a lot of demonstrators one of them just coming in to shop there. after these these clashes between police and rioters we we saw several police every rioters on the floor afterward so people are being been hurt in this but when the police moved in it was a huge sea of people stump eating away we were in amongst all of that and were able to. get it darted into

a hotel. sake takes take shelter there is the police cleaned that out put the thing what's happening at the moment is a soon as the police clear these these rioters out the rioters wait about five minutes and then they throwing rocks and burning tires is the latest that we've seen been so and as they try to retake those barricades that they've been they've been cleared off so there's a lot of people arriving here it is a public holiday in ukraine and not certainly reflected in the numbers that we're seeing but we're also seeing many many groups turning up must in helmets carrying rudimentary weapons looking something more like out of a medieval movie than modern day ukraine homemade homemade weaponry and they people are they have been receiving orders we've been hearing them about how they're going to organize their attacks against the police so these attacks on going anywhere any time soon and we will be bringing you all of that the latest does it all falls here in kiev. all right peter all of our reporting there

live from kiev peter thank you very much and please do keep us up to date. ok. let's move on now and the giants of international diplomacy have the future of syria and magnifying glass as the long awaited peace talks have started in the picturesque town of montrose. wraps up the latest statements for. even though the main agreement for this conference was to be for it to be held without any preconditions first the syrian opposition taking port were saying that they're going to push for president assad to step down and now u.s. secretary of state john kerry said that the syrian president has no future in his

country once again despite the fact that washington and moscow they've been organizing this conference they both agreed that no preconditions was sort of the main condition for this whole event to be helt we've heard from the russian foreign minister city a lot of also in his opening statement earlier today and he's been saying that he hopes all outside players will keep themselves from distorting the course of this conference and from making any predictions on its outcome bunky moon u.n. secretary general was saying that he hopes both sides of the conflict both of thirty's and the opposition will finally allow humanitarian aid to get inside so clearly there are still sticking points here we're seeing at the conference in montreaux the other sticking point is that iran is not taking part it was supposed to but opposition was completely against that and while this position was supported

by washington which ended up asking the united nations to cancel rounds invitation and according to a city a lot of this is not a catastrophe that iran is not taking part but it is a key hour in that region is definitely with a lot of influence on the situation in syria and while not having it participating in the conference would definitely not help uniting the muslim community in the fight against terror which is also one of the key issues on the table here for more i'm joined by a german journalist kareen. thank you very much for joining me so you are based in syria they're now talking about terrorism. in one of the key threats and that is being agreed by all sides present here in the sky of france how how real is that threat did you feel it yourself can you tell us more about that. it's definitely to be felt inside syria and i'm based in damascus but i travel around

a lot as much as possible. you can feel it on a daily basis by grenades by explosions inside the city you never know where grenade might explode where it can hit you and you know pupils and civilians. are hit by these grenades but so you can feel it by kidnapping kidnapping killing and you never know who's doing it people are disappearing. the friends of mine have been kidnapped they disappeared so yes you can feel the threat of terror on the ground very much. up next it's a pita about crosstalk. hello

and welcome to crossfire for all things considered on people the interim agreement with iran is now in effect what are its prospects for all sides honestly committed to resolving the whole spectrum of issues that have separated washington around for decades can't israel and its congressional allies specifically the senate kill the deal and if for some miraculous reason all sides agree to keep to the agreement what can we expect next. to cross on the interim agreement with iran i'm joined by my guest richard white's in washington he's a senior fellow and director of the center for political military analysis at the hudson institute and in new york we cross to urban abrahamian he is an author and a distinguished professor of history at the city university of new york all right gentlemen cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it richard if i go to you first the interim agreement with the international community in iran is in effect of this week here there was

a lot of discussion coming out of the u.s. senate and we there obviously lobbyist groups in washington that were putting casting aspersions let's say on the interim agreement but it's in effect and the i.a.e.a. said already that iran is committed to this it's already done what it's most of what it's committed to do in the initial phases how do you see this panning out. i think that the interim agreement well probably be implemented as specified all the parties have an incentive to do that. he does not appear to be any development that we for see that would cause the process to be disrupted there's of course always as we know in the whole history of this negotiation there are always and still are a developments that can cause complications like the syria geneva talks but i think it's because they will be implemented the big challenge is whether the parties will be able to take advantage of the interim agreement and transform it into

a more enduring settlement and there i'm less optimistic pretty optimistic about the interim agreement and not very optimistic about the region a comprehensive deal ok event if i go to you in new york how do you see this because it leaves at this point both sides iran in the international community with under this interim agreement seem committed what's the stumbling blocks going down as we go forward i mean it's a six month period so is it going to be smooth sailing or are going to be elements on both sides that want to derail this. i'm actually more off to mystic than richard i think boat parked his boat there rouhani administration the bush and obama administration are actually determined to settle the nuclear issue is part of going to be their legacy of their administrations so they have their eyes fixed the fixed on the prize of getting this nuclear issue is resolved so they

will go all the way they can to get it so there will be opposition from both sides the iranian rightwing will offer obviously object but i think they're marginalize they'll be obviously some opposition in congress but they'll be mostly grandstanding i think when it comes to the crunch most of the democratic congressman will not dare to read to go against their own democratic president and i call it the views of israel about this i think on the whole because the obama administration is very determined to get this through they will get it through richard i read your piece on the in these talks in the interim agreement i find it really quite fascinating and i must admit you went into a lot of technical details is it really more political will on both sides unless the technical issues or do you find them more germane and again it gets down to what the west perceives as transparency coming out of tehran. well i think

that the the technical details are important because they down on the political dialogue and vice versa if there are political complications it's going to be more strenuously demand in the technical i mean there are just some key issues that are need to be resolved and there's no easy answer to them i mean how much and richmond if any and probably be some can iran conduct what kind of verification how extensive the koreans seem to be and so on and i concur with your previous speaker that they bomb ministration irani ministration would like to achieve an agreement but the problem is i think they still in vision in a different and stayed there and we also have to deal with all the other parties we saw the french proved. basically i was he's from disruptive that's really the

wrong term but basically they they complicated the initial negotiations because of some concern about the one the plutonium reactor rack and i could see that happening in other cases with the british the french and others objecting to certain features such as malta a lot of guys here and there are very complicated richard if i can stay with you i mean that you bring up really good points there and would you think that they will be brought up because you're absolutely right if you go on both sides if you want to find a reason not to talk and not to agree both sides have a whole panoply of things that they can throw out there do you think that's going to happen. well if they don't others will so the if there's no discussion about for example the iraq reactor which the west wants to be discontinued because it can be used to make bombs directly it's plutonium producing reactor whereas the iranian ministration

says they see this as an essential component in their nuclear structure and if there's even that's really a fundamental disagreement and so if they do they have to has to be addressed somewhere in the comprehensive agreement and if the even if the u.s. and the iranians which i don't believe would cry and keep it out other parties will try and bring it in either those at the negotiating table or outside commentators senators and so on if i go back to you in new york one of the interesting things and it's a big picture thing that i think a lot of people don't really focus in on the united states and iran are actually speaking to each other again after so many decades i mean can you see that the process of negotiating can actually start lowering these tensions here they're not going to find complete agreement on everything we both know that all three of us know about but the very fact that they're negotiating is that have an extra effect on these talks here. yes and i think i mean we should keep an eye

it's really between iran and united states the others are a basically a side issue a show you can bring in saudi arabia the gulf states and so on but they're not crucial to the negotiations as long as u.s. and iran are willing to can negotiate and come to an agreement the others can make noises and i think in fact the french could call west cause problems but the british and germans are of course the russians and the chinese are more than eager to get some sort of agreement i think those technical issues again are minor once there is the sation their determination to come to a. agreement then those technical issues could be aren't so i don't think the plutonium issue is really serious because even that plan doesn't actually produce could do produce weaponized or weaponized saying you raney and it's more to do to

have to go through another process which iran doesn't yet have so i these things are i think the issues that could be complicate the issues only if you want to. sabotage the negotiations and both sides at the moment are more than eager to actually come to an agreement richard it seems that i'm again going back to the paper you wrote which was quite fascinating is it at the end of the day is the west going to allow. iran to enrich uranium i mean under the nonproliferation treaty and has that right to do that but this seems to be really the crux of it no one you know we're going to go through the next six months is that question going to be addressed because obviously the iranians will say they have the right to do it and they will walk away most likely from the negotiating table if they're denied it. i think what you're going to see is the west will not explicitly acknowledge that iran has the right to enrich their name or a nym i mean the n.p.t.

and other agreements they don't say you have a right they don't say you don't have a right they they it's just not something that it's not described in those terms. but iran has the capacity to enrich uranium and it's not clear how you could get them to dismantle that. difference is the is going to be really about a scale and that's where the technicalities come in the geneva agreement says that they the they're going to agree on a what kind of richmond can occur in accord with iran's practical means and at the moment it doesn't need any enriched uranium because it only has one nuclear reactor and the russians have a very helpfully range deliver that fuel and then take it back so it can't be used to make it turn to bomb and so the west might say well you can have you know do have some enrich uranium for you know if you need it just in case there's an interruption supplies or so on the iranians say well we've got all these plans we

want to build you know ten reactors next decade and do all this and that's what we need to have a very extensive. program and then that's where the problem's going to be they have different visions of the end state of where rand will be and what's capable of what's permissible. since as you know we had said a bit it's obvious that if you have a very comprehensive richmond capacity very extensive civilian commercial nuclear industry that is not too difficult to use to start producing the material you need for a nuclear weapon the fissile material in there enrich uranium to a very higher state and one renaissance so far or separate plutonium. which is what the r.e.x.x. reactor might present as a problem all right gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the state authority. basic.

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please. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the interim agreement with iran. ok i'm going to go back to you in new york in the first part of the program we ended on talking about iran's rights and and i think that this is you know this is the crux of the matter here whatever demands and needs they have for nuclear energy is anyone's guess but at the end of the day they have they believe they have the right to have that kind of energy capacity and this is what is going to get down to i mean we could have intelligence report after another one after another there is no intentionality to build a bomb i mean lots of intelligence communities say but for domestic consumption for

political reasons at home ran can't give that up they just simply can't. well i mean my understanding of the producer progression treaty is that once you saw and you have the right to actually do some enrichment and not to the point of actually weaponized thing and when iran says it has the right to enrich that's what they're arguing and that's doesn't contradict the obama administration if you obama has constantly said that he has no objection to iran having a nuclear program he objects to any nuclear program that would become a nuclear weapons program so that's where i think there's good grounds for having a settlement how much enrichment can be done at what level these are i think tactical issues that could be settled once both sides are actually willing to come to an agreement and you know years ago you iran was willing to come to sort of

settlement it was the bush administration that vetoed it and the same people now at the two year making decisions in iran rouhani are in fact arguing the same thing they did two years ago and the u.s. position has changed and u.s. is now willing to actually come to an agreement richard is this a window of opportunity because we do have a new administration in iran and i think it's already been mentioned on this program that obama would like some kind of foreign policy achievement in its second term because he didn't do too well to date so far you know how does this play into it because a lot of that you know when you think about ten years ago when all of the sanctions started coming on there was no enrichment now there's a lot of enrichment going on in iran and now we're at the table is this an opportunity in your mind. it may be an opportunity we're still i mean we're still i think that the administration if this thing is it could be and so we're going to try and see if we can make this into an opportunity it's

still a bit uncertain i mean there are some uncertainty over for example how much power president and his team has versus the. supreme leader and if there is going to be a difference in the revolutionary guards and and so on. and so i also would not accept without a little challenge to your earlier statement about there is no evidence that iran has any intention to seek a nuclear weapon and there's there's evidence that some rain ians and the past at least ok thought about that ok fair enough and there are enough. room in the right in the future you could see some new iranians think about that that's the problem ok ok i agree before two thousand and two there is evidence that yes there were thinking about it. even if i go back to you in new york i want to look at some of the other players here because it was the senate it looked like it was you know in revolt here when a number of us senators were backing a bill that could impose more sanctions here i mean it's this is extremely

unhelpful to an administration it's trying to do something big and very different than and i think we all would agree for the agreement a permanent agreement came into play it would be good for the united states would be good for the world and be good for the average iranian as well i mean what about these other players here are they going to keep a low for the next few months we're going to see more trouble. well there i think there are people obviously very much who reflect the israeli point of view and they're going to continue objecting but when it comes to the crunch there it's hard for them to stand up against the u.s. president president who says this is in the u.s. interest to do this continent greenmount and to and then to argue no it's not it's in israel's interests not to have an agreement at the american public is not going to accept that i think the the most congressman realize that they might make noises but they can't read the sabotage this thing and you have to keep in mind another

issue is that if the u.s. president agrees to a deal which iran excepts and the senate that says says no what does the rest of the wall going to do is the rest of the world going to listen to the senators are they going to listen to the u.s. president i think the whole sanctions system will on ravel if there is an agreement and even if the senate doesn't approve of it it's interesting richard the unraveling of sanctions and any you know in there's so many different ways you can look at this needs negotiations of course iran would like to see the end of those saying sions and there are those voices in washington that say once you start going down that path it's a slippery slope once you are start undoing saying sions it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. i agree with that we've already see same some of the sanctions begin to unravel we know there's these rumors about this russian iran deal the chinese appear to be more interested i mean what is happening

lots five or six years under both the bush administration that the treasury and state department go around intel or countries you've got to stop doing their brand if you do you want access to the us financial system and so on and it's been very effective and the momentum has been driving to tighter and tighter sanctions now i think that's reverse and i agree with it with our colleague that if if there was a deal announced in the senate blocked it that would just encourage further countries to to end their sanctions so you're going to see sanctions relief and i think that's something though it has one minor positive fact in that the there's been some discussion about whether if we reach a deal the senate will really approve the withdraw ending of sanctions by the u.s. and so on i think that the iranians shouldn't be thinking that they should be thinking about how useful it would be if they could come to an agreement to limit their nuclear program and not have the u.s. treasury in the state department go around all these countries and say don't deal

with iran or just not just stay home because i think that will give them a lot more benefit than they can ever wheel stickley hope to get from dealing with the u.s. economically event in new york how can this change the region this is this is big stuff i mean i'm i look at your face look at richard face we're all children of the cold war and you know we've been living with this very difficult relationship with the run for decades now this is a real window of opportunity how could it change the region and i'm thinking about israel and i'm thinking of saudi arabia i we've mentioned them before but they do not like this idea and they're going to push and they will continue to push. yes i don't i mean i think the nuclear issue is the most important issue because it's so dangerous and you know it could do to these lead to a u.s. iran war but if it's resolved it doesn't mean that basically the whole scene is going to change there will be still a lot of friction between the u.s.

and iran their historical reasons for it their course u.s. run line says in the region so it's not going to be a brave new world just because the nuclear issue is resolved but i think the nuclear issue is so important that it should be resolved before other issues are even addressed so i don't i don't see is somehow a return to the good old days of the shah being policy would whoever is in the white house those days are gone but the nuclear issue is such a dangerous so you shoot that it's in the interests of both to us and you're on to the road need to resolve that richard doesn't it if they were determined position of being on ministration go ahead richard jump in go ahead yeah it is it is there's been a bomb inspirational they phrase it a little differently it's if you can't trust iran to agree to comply with its nuclear obligations you can't really trust them for anything syria afghanistan ever

and so therefore we have to settle the nuclear issue before we can achieve extensive cooperation with other areas although i think you're going to see a little de facto cooperation maybe in afghanistan and well i'm glad you brought it up richard because we're fast running out of time richard i want to stay with you what's your reaction to the united states having the united nations disinvite to iran to the talks and on syria in geneva i mean this is getting to what you're saying trust well. go ahead right and it's not i mean the way that it's come out of the u.n. is the iranians said they would agree to do something and then they didn't and that's why they're being disinvited i mean u.s. pressure played a part i have to think there was just some miscommunication. somewhere along the line either president general don thought the bomb a stray from was going to be the one thing and misinterpreted that or he thought our the syrian opposition didn't make clear their own kind of calm or there was some confusion over what they thought the iranians said they were going to do and

so on so i wouldn't i think the russian government was correct in saying this is a disappointing development but it's not a tragic or fundamental one i think i really agree with the russians on this analysis that this appears to have been. an error perhaps to the weekend like in timing or something but it's not something that would this is necessarily going to affect the outcome of the negotiation ok in new york you want to you have thirty seconds here to react to this story. i agree that i don't think it's going to do it because. the rouhani administration is very eager to get a resolution to the nuclear issue so that for them the syrian issue is second but going to the point about trust and if you contrast iran on the nuclear contrast a very the fact is most governments don't trust other governments and while after all why snow obama administration eavesdropping on merkel could be more friendly

all right that's a different job big gentlemen they did great job big thanks to my guests today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. president jimmy sat here's a guy who committed pedophilia with over four hundred children and he's taken to the court take on the old bailey and his defense is if you prosecute me i'm going to go to switzerland that's what they just be a say if you prosecute me and are scads and scores and hundreds of incidents of fraud we threaten to leave the country and the government says oh no.

this is the media leave us so we leave the media. doesn't see pollution security play your part of the musical. wear shoes that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politics only on our t.v. . right to see. first street. and i think the true. reformers would.

be a mole. violent clashes engulf central kiev as ukrainian police stared down the barricades on the chase rioters on a full day on to government approach has three people have died. in the crisis is being fueled by national polls came to take the opportunity to push for revolution that. also this hour syria's government and opposition sit face to face for the first time since the start of the conflict but this start a long anticipated peace talks in switzerland have exposed a pattern is a very different views on the future.